Toronto (June 21, 2021) – Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) has been engaging with union representatives across the country who are shocked and angry that the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) used backdoor methods to ram through a resolution in support of a boycott of Israel.

Last week, the CLC held its annual convention, a forum in which delegates from affiliated unions debate and vote on pressing policy matters. A resolution calling for the boycott of Israel was proposed at the convention, but membership gave it such low priority that it never came to the convention floor. When it was already clear the convention would not be approving any anti-Israel resolutions, a committee called the Canadian Council - made up of the CLC executive and a number of representatives from affiliated unions - met and surreptitiously adopted the resolution to boycott Israel on the very same day the convention was still taking place.

FSWC has been in conversation with leadership in a number of CLC affiliates, as well as numerous union members from across the country who reached out to us over the weekend, all of whom were bewildered and upset to find out that an anti-Israel resolution was passed behind closed doors, even though it lacked the support to make it to the convention floor. The resolution falsely accuses Israel of committing “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians and rebukes Israel for “bombing Gaza,” without mentioning the thousands of rockets fired at Israel’s towns and cities by Hamas in the last five weeks.

“The CLC knew that the delegates did not consider it a priority to so much as debate this kind of inflammatory and divisive resolution. But it was adopted anyway. This leaves a lot of us with some very serious questions about the CLC and its commitment to hearing members’ voices,” one union member who was a delegate at last week’s convention told FSWC.

FSWC calls on union members of good conscience who belong to any CLC affiliate to contact their leaders and speak out loudly and clearly against such blatantly one-sided efforts to poison the labour movement with hatred for the Jewish state and create a toxic environment for Jewish and pro-Israel members.